What Narrative is. An essay in descriptive narratology.

What is it about?

Here's how the editors sum up my argument: "Klaus Speidel takes a first step towards “descriptive narratology” in his article. Speidel takes the well-known theoretical discussion about whether an individual image can be considered a narrative and puts it to an empirical test. He argues for the value of the intuitions of everyday picture viewers over the definitions derived from theoretical systems that might be biased towards the verbal model. Speidel brings into dialogue the discussions of narratology, that unfold around very specific and refined terminologies, and the everyday sense in which picture viewers might say “this really tells a story”, presenting a new possible model for doing narrative studies empirically.

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Why is it important?

This study challenges the idea that in order to know if something is of a certain kind, for instance an artwork, a story, a game, definitions are a good place to start. In narratology, this is however the most common approach. Rather, the article suggests that definitions should stand the test of intuitions as systematically assessed in experiments. This is the first empirical study concerning the way the narrativity of single pictures is assessed by viewers. It challenges expert definitions of narrative and suggests that narrative studies have traditionally been revisionary, not taking sufficiently into account what laypeople think about narrative.

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